March brings seasonal change for birds

Recent weather hasn’t been promising, but March always arrives with a promise of avian change.

Increasingly, late February brings the opening blackbird salvo, and waterfowl are always ready to move in concert with melting ice, but March remains the seasonal starting point for a suite species.

American woodcocks, long part of this group, are now showing signs of moving up to February, as a widespread arrival during our recent 70s temperature event illustrated. March will find them returned to all their many breeding areas around the state.

Woodcocks use open areas for their mating displays, but these occur under cover of darkness at dawn and dusk. Killdeers come back in open areas where they’re easily observed, and their noisy calling makes them easy to locate. In additional to pastures and lawns, they can use parking lots and flat roofs for nesting.

What else should we be looking for?

It doesn’t take much of a weather incentive to bring tree swallows flocking into Connecticut, making first appearances along the coast and up the major river systems. They often arrive on days when their flying insect prey would appear hard to find, but their maneuvers close to the water surface in places such as the Connecticut River reveal their ability to find emerging edibles.

The hardy tree swallow precedes the other swallow species, and in the same manner the eastern phoebes arrive well ahead of the other flycatchers. The swallows flock, but the phoebes are more solitary as they search for protected nest sites around waterways and out buildings.

Among the wood warblers, yellow-rumped warblers are noted for overwintering in modest numbers, but they’re not the earliest arrivals as migrants. That distinction goes to the pine warbler. A few pine warblers also overwinter – or at least try – but before the end of March newly arriving birds will start to sing on territory, almost exclusively in stands of large white pines in our area.

Have I forgotten anything? Oh yes, American robins. They’ve always been overrated as heralds of spring, arriving behind the blackbirds, but now the increasing number of wintering flocks makes their early appearances harder to interpret.